Serious punishment for self-immolation manipulations

Court convictions to punish the people who incited others to self-immolate manifested the dignity and authority of the law, said a published article by Yi Duo on Thursday.

Manipulating self-immolations to slay others is a punishable crime, whether in China or other countries, the article said.

The writer said that the convictions are a heavy blow for the Dalai Lama clique.

A court in southwest China's Sichuan Province on Thursday convicted two ethnic Tibetans of intentional homicide for inciting eight people to self-immolate, three of whom died.

Lorang Konchok, 40, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve and has been stripped of his political rights for life. His nephew, Lorang Tsering, 31, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and has been stripped of his political rights for three years, according to the court verdict.

Also on Thursday, another six people were sentenced by a court in northwest China's Gansu Province to three to 12 years in prison for being implicated in a self-immolation case.

The Dalai Lama group uses Dalai Lama's influence in religion to incite self-immolations. The Dalai Lama himself has also described such conduct as "positive" in public, according to the article.

Such delusions have led some religious followers, especially youths, astray into the clique's secessionist schemes, the article said.

In a legally binding document jointly issued by the Supreme People's Court, Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security, the authorities have made it clear that any act to organize, design, incite, coerce, induce, abet or help others in self-immolation is a crime that intends to take others' lives.

The document also spelt out that such acts will be regarded as intentional homicide and subjected to criminal punishment.

The Yi Duo article further noted that the court trial procedures regarding the convicts were carried out in accordance with the law.

All the trials were made in public, and Mandarin and Tibetan language services were available throughout the trial procedures, the article said.

The defendants and their attorneys were given opportunities to fully express their opinions. Relatives of the defendants and members from the public attended the trial. Their procedural rights were fully protected, the article said.

Evidence has revealed that the Dalai Lama group is behind all the self-immolation cases in Tibetan regions so far, the article said.

According to police investigation, the "Tibetan Youth Congress" and the "Kirti Monastery media liaison team" under the Dalai Lama group have been secretly giving orders, issuing assignments and providing funds from overseas for their contacts in China, it said.

"It was Lorang Konchok, the man who admitted that he himself is 'afraid of death and the pain of burning,' had goaded multiple people to self-immolation following overseas instructions and sent the messages and video clips of the acts abroad for the Dalai Lama group's propaganda," the article said.

Facing the mounting doubt about such behaviors, both from China and other parts of the world, Dalai Lama has tried to whitewash their plot by arguing that self-immolation is not violent.

However, the courts' sentences have pierced the group's equivocal coverup with irrefutable evidence, the article said.

The court convictions have won the support from the public. The facts that the Dalai Lama group is inciting self-immolations and violating the law, the humanity and the Buddhist doctrines have sparked outrage and opposition of both the public and religious circles, it said.

The anger grew even more acute when people got to know the grief of the bereaved family of a 17-year-old self-immolator.

The article noted that some people have questioned why the Dalai Lama group is advocating self-immolations without sending a "bigwig" from itself to practice the "sacred deed"?

The article further mentioned that during a forum on Jan. 16, more than 40 eminent Buddhist monks and scholars expressed their condolences for the deaths of the self-immolation victims and stressed that ahimsa, meaning no killing, is a basic Buddha dharma.

The article also stressed that Chinese police have worked vigorously and cracked several cases of self-immolation plots, saving multiple young lives.

Thanks to the police's efforts, which are supported by the public, self-immolation tragedies are restrained to only a limited number of areas, and there is no such thing dreamed by Dalai Lama and his followers that all the Tibetan regions are in flames.

The investigation, trial and conviction of the cases have awoken many people once involved to the reality.

The article quoted a self-immolation survivor Sangde as saying: "First I thought I was a hero, but now I realize that I was such an idiot at that time."

Convicted Lorang Tsering was also quoted as saying that "I don't believe they (self-immolators) are really 'heroes', I just think they were fooled."

However, the Dalai Lama group is still planning more tragedies. A latest provocation is an attempt to organize a thousand people to self-immolate, according to Yi's article, which quoted a piece written by a man close to the Dalai Lama.

It is evident that the Dalai Lama group is on the verge of craziness, and group members do not care risking the whole Tibetan ethnic group and its religion to save their doomed schemes, the article said.

"Anyone who manipulates self-immolation and seeks secession and social disturbance should be subjected to punishment in accordance with the law," the article said.

"I firmly believe that after the convictions, there will be greater economic and social development and better lives for the people in Tibet, as well as the four Tibetan areas," the writer said.